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Don’t you hate it when you visit a web site and the web site’s text is so small, you can barely make out what you are reading? Here are a few ways you can work around that everyday issue.

Three Ways to Enlarge or Shrink Text

You can enlarge text per web site you are visiting by holding the Ctrl key on your keyboard and scrolling up to enlarge text, and down to shrink text. If your mouse doesn’t have the scroll wheel, then you can also do this by holding the Ctrl key and hitting the “+” key to enlarge text, and the “-” key to make text smaller. The third way to enlarge text via Firefox would be to go to your menu bar, go to View > Zoom, and then choose to zoom in (to make things bigger) or zoom out (to make things smaller).

Reset a Web Page to Normal (after Zooming)

Now if you have messed around with the font size so much, your not sure what the default size should be – you can reset that too. Just go to the menu bar, then click View > Zoom and then Reset. This will reset the web page to it’s normal viewing size.

So there you have a few more accessibility options to play with from within Firefox, so you can stop squinting at web pages you are trying to read.

One feature I really love in Firefox, that probably does not get the credit it deserves, is the smart zooming features. A feature that was new to Firefox 3, this allows you to zoom an entire page to make it larger or smaller. You may need to make a site larger to make it easier to read, or you might make it smaller to fit within the screen real estate of your smaller monitors (for examples, those people out there who may have netbooks).

There are several ways you can zoom into or out of the page you are on.

Keyboard:

(make the page bigger) Ctrl and the + Key

(make the page smaller) Ctrl and the – Key

Mouse:

(make the page bigger) Hold the Ctrl Key and Scroll Up

(make the page smaller) Hold the Ctrl Key and Scroll Down

Toolbar:

View > Zoom > Zoom In

View > Zoom > Zoom Out

One more zooming trick that Firefox has up its sleeve is the ability to only zoom in on text, leaving graphics their normal sizes. To do that, go to View > Zoom and select “Zoom Text Only”. To reset a page’s specific zoom level (large or small), go to View > Zoom > Reset or hit Ctrl and the 0 key. Firefox will remember which pages you have larger too. So for example, you could zoom into FirefoxFacts.com, but when you visit WebHostingShow.com, it would still be at its normal size. Your preferences are remembered for each site you visit.